full-disclosure - Re: Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran

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Message-ID: <20120610192253.6536e200@terabyte>
Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2012 19:22:53 -0400
From: Benjamin Kreuter <ben.kreuter@...il.com>
To: full-disclosure@...ts.grok.org.uk
Subject: Re: Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks
	Against Iran

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On Sun, 10 Jun 2012 17:06:37 -0400
Laurelai <laurelai@...echan.org> wrote:

> I am a bit surprised by the direction of this conversation and I have
> been waiting for someone to say the obvious in regards to protecting
> yourself from .gov malware, it really is quite simple if you think
> about it. Stuxnet, duqu, flame, ect.. all only run on windows
> platforms. If the people you are protecting are concerned about that
> kind of malware (and they should be) it would be a great time to tell
> them about GNU/Linux, BSD, ect..

Which would do little to protect anyone.  Do you really think that
GNU/Linux would be a more difficult target for the NSA (or whichever
agencies were responsible -- I would guess the NSA, but there may be
others)?  GNU/Linux machines are compromised by criminals all the time,
and the majority of people would not be willing to put in the effort
needed to keep their system secure.

There are probably a bunch of remote exploits in the Linux kernel, in
Firefox and Chrome, in OpenSSL and NSS, in Ghostscript, and in any of
the thousands of other packages that will be installed on a typical
GNU/Linux system.

There is no magic bullet here.  Security is not about running the right
OS, it is about running your OS the right way (and more).  Telling
people that using GNU/Linux will make them safe is silly.

- -- Ben


- -- 
Benjamin R Kreuter
UVA Computer Science
brk7bx@...ginia.edu
KK4FJZ

- --

"If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there
will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public
opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even
if laws exist to protect them." - George Orwell
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